Parents of Austin Tice, Held Hostage in Syria, Say He Is Alive

The parents of Austin Tice, the journalist and former Marine from Texas who was abducted in Syria in August 2012, said on Wednesday that they had reason to believe that their son was alive.

“We wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you if we didn’t — weren’t completely positive that Austin’s going to come home safely,” his father, Marc Tice, told Lester Holt in an interview on “NBC Nightly News.”

Image

Marc and Debra Tice, the parents of Austin Tice, spoke about their son’s disappearance in Syria on the “Today” show.CreditNBC News' TODAY

Debra Tice and her husband, who also spoke with Matt Lauer on “Today” on Wednesday morning, confirmed that the United States government had shared with them why it thought he was alive, but they would not elaborate on the reasons.

“We need to keep their confidence, so that we can keep working well together as a team,” Ms. Tice told Mr. Lauer.

“We are absolutely gratified at the engagement we’ve had with this new administration,” Ms. Tice told Mr. Holt. “How quickly they’ve become aware and engaged and advocating for Austin’s safe return.”

The Syrian government insists it does not know what happened to Mr. Tice or where he is. And his parents said that they had seen no proof that he was alive, they told Mr. Holt, aside from a YouTube video that was posted one month after Mr. Tice disappeared.

In the video, titled “Austin Tice Still Alive,” he appears blindfolded and disheveled, and is surrounded by masked men with rifles. He utters part of an Arabic prayer and says, “Oh, Jesus.”

Last year, in a secret analysis, the American intelligence community said there was a good chance that Mr. Tice was alive. But the momentum to find Mr. Tice stalled in April when the Syrian government carried out a gas attack on its own people, killing dozens.

Outrage about American hostages being held by foreign governments was renewed last week after the death of Otto Warmbier, a college student from Ohio who spent more than a year in a North Korean prison before being medically evacuated to the United States.

The Tices — who lived in Damascus for a time to search for information about their son — stressed that the effort to bring their son home is a humanitarian one, not a foreign policy issue. “We have to be completely apolitical,” she said.

Mr. Tice will turn 36 years old on Aug. 11. “We’re really hoping that we can hand him his birthday cards in person,” his father said.

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of the father of Austin Tice on first reference. He is Marc Tice, not Price.